1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to programmable devices, and more particularly, to the programming and storing revision data in programmable devices.
2. The Background Art
The problems associated with keeping track of the revision levels of various programmable devices in a system are known in the art. Currently, there exists an indirect scheme of keeping track of programmable device revisions. FIG. 1 is an operational block diagram of a computer system 100 according to the prior art. The system 100 typically includes two types of programmable devices, such as independent programmable devices (PD) 102, 104, 106, and an EPROM 108 for storing revision information. Typically, PD 102-106 may comprise any field programmable gate array (FPGA) devices or Erasable Programmable Logic Devices (EPLDs) known in the art.
During the design cycle of a new product, PDs will typically be reprogrammed many times in an effort to de-bug and optimize the software residing in the various PDs residing in a given system. During reprogramming, the revision level of each PD present in a system must be accounted for and documented.
Typically, the engineer overseeing the system programming must keep track of the PDs revision through steps illustrated in FIG. 2. Prior to updating the PD, the system must be powered up in act 202. The PD may then be reprogrammed in act 204, and the system may then be restarted in act 206.
After the system has been reprogrammed and restarted, the engineer must then update the revision level of the various PDs present in the system by programming the EPROM with the appropriate revision data in act 208. Typically, this may be accomplished by using the command line interface (CLI) of the system or the like.
However, as can be seen from FIG. 2, the updating of the EPROM is a separate act from the programming of the system. Unfortunately, the act of updating the EPROM with the appropriate revision data is quite often forgotten, thereby wasting many man hours in the debugging a particular problem later traced to the programming of a programmable device with an older version of software than the one required to run the system appropriately.
It is therefore desirable to create a system or a method in which some of these required steps are eliminated or replaced with a simpler system or method, thereby reducing the risk of losing man-hours to debugging systems due to programming errors.